Cough Medicine Could Harm Your Children

Cough Medicine Isn't for Kids
By Nancy Shute
US News & World Report

I confess: I drugged my kid. My intentions were good; she had a cough and needed to sleep. Surely a spoonful of cough medicine would be a mercy. My 4-year-old slurped up the grape-flavored syrup and trotted off to bed. Good mommy? Hardly.

I already knew that the cold medicines that crowd pharmacy shelves have never been properly tested to see if they're safe or effective for children. The reason those cheerful packages don't list dosages for children under age 2, but just say "ask a doctor," is that the Food and Drug Administration has never appproved a safe amount. See: On Parenting: Cough Medicine Isn't for Kids - US News and Wo...

Also See:

"CHPA Lends Support to FDA's Announcement Against Use of Oral, Over-the-Counter Cough and Cold Medicines in Children Under Two-AOL News"

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 -- On behalf of the leading makers of over-the-counter (OTC) cough and cold medicines, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) offered its support for today's U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decision against the use of oral OTC cough and cold medicines in children under the age of two.

The agency's recommendation reaffirms the October 2007 action by the leading makers of pediatric OTC medicines' to voluntarily withdraw "infant" oral cough and cold medicines for children under the age of two. See: CHPA Lends Support to FDA's Announcement Against Use of Oral, Over-the-Counter Cough and Cold Medicines in Children Under Two

F.D.A. Says Cloned Animals Safe to Eat

FDA declared that food from cloned animals and their progeny is safe
By Andrew Martin
New York Times

After years of debate, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday declared that food from cloned animals and their progeny is safe, removing the last government hurdle before meat and milk derived from copies of prize dairy cows and superior hogs can be sold at grocery stores.

The decision comes more than four years after the agency tentatively declared that food from cloned animals was safe, only to face a backlash from consumer groups and some scientists who said the science supporting the decision was shaky.
On Tuesday, the F.D.A. declared that further studies had confirmed its earlier decision. Extensive measurement of nutrients in the meat and milk of clones found no cause for alarm, the agency said.

“Following extensive review, the risk assessment did not identify any unique risks for human food from cattle, swine or goat clones, and concluded that there is sufficient information to determine that food from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as that from their more conventionally bred counterparts," the agency said in a statement.

The F.D.A. ruling was a major victory for cloning companies, which hope to use the cloned animals primarily for breeding purposes, selling copies of prize dairy cows, steers and hogs. The company putting the most effort into developing the technology is ViaGen, of Austin, Texas. That company and others have already produced scores of clones that live on American farmsteads, though the F.D.A. has asked the farmers to honor a voluntary moratorium on the sale of clone meat and milk.

No law prohibits such sales, and the document the F.D.A. issued Tuesday is essentially an advisory opinion to industry saying the agency sees no ground to seek a permanent ban.

See: FDA Says Food From Cloned Animals Is Safe

US scientists create beating heart in lab

The hope would be we could generate an organ that matched your body
Reuters News Service

CHICAGO - US researchers say they have coaxed hearts from dead rats to beat again in the laboratory and said the discovery may one day lead to customised organ transplants for people.

"The hope would be we could generate an organ that matched your body," said Doris Taylor of the University of Minnesota Centre for Cardiovascular Repair.

Her study, which appeared on Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine, offers a way to fulfill the promise of using stem cells - the body's master cells - to grow tailor-made organs for transplant. Taylor and colleagues used a process called decellularisation to wash away existing cells from the hearts of dead rats while leaving the basic collagen structure intact.

They injected this gelatin-like scaffold with heart cells from newborn rats, fed them a nutrient-rich solution and left them in the lab to grow.

Four days later, the hearts started to contract(beat).

See: US scientists create beating heart in lab - 14 Jan 2008 - NZ Herald ...